Analysis Of David Foster Wallace's Commencement Speech At Kenyon College

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On May 21, 2005 David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement address at Kenyon College to graduating seniors as a realistic look at life after college. This speech discusses the importance of having a degree and the real values of an education which is not only about the knowledge we learn but also about having a sense of awareness. Wallace’s speech also talked about the transitions we go through in our lives and how it changes our prospectives while getting more aware about the reality we live in and what makes some people feel like they are the center of the universe. Adding to that his speech simply illustrates the life of pessimists as miserable and unable to move forward as long as they lack aspirations and view things in a negative …show more content…

At the begining, he started his address with a short story of younger fish asking an elder fish about the water. The elder fish could 0not comprehend what the question meant or what the younger fish were talking about. Following that, Wallace said, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about”. This statement presents the main point of his speech as a whole, the fact that looking to into life from another prospective can save people from a slippery slope. Wallace follows up, “everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe”. Then he goes on the fact of believing that every situation is all about you and that every other human was created to accomplish your specific task. Wallace refers to this as a human’s “natural default setting”.To emphasize his main idea, Wallace talks about a person who had to make a late night trip to a busy grocery after a long day of work to refill his home refrigerator, and not only this person is upset because of the crowd, who in his mind holding him back from accomplishing this, but because the work and exhaustion are a daily

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